Alt text:
I don’t mind yellow paint as much as it is a sign of the broader issue of big games trying to be idiot-proof. If a game has yellow paint I expect it to be as easy as it can be outside of giving me literal god mode.
Alt text:
I don’t mind yellow paint as much as it is a sign of the broader issue of big games trying to be idiot-proof. If a game has yellow paint I expect it to be as easy as it can be outside of giving me literal god mode.
I’m currently replaying Cyberpunk 2077 and while it uses these color codes in some places to help you find alternative routes, you can climb almost anywhere and there were several instances where just having internalized that you can climb (given it having the correct height) will give you the edge in combat or result in you having a better/unexpected angle to a situation.
When they have consistent traversal mechanics like being able to grab ledges you can jump about chest high to it’s not much of an issue. You intuit where you can go pretty quickly once you understand the movement system. But games where everything you can climb is hand crafted and placed strategically to create a linear experience? You either have to make every climbable surface look identical so players easily recognize it as climbable (hand holds in rocks, vines, etc) or put some kind of marking on it (yellow/white/red paint splashes or highlights).
Trying to remember what it was I was playing recently where I came to a dead end and couldn’t figure out what I was missing because the climbable wall in the dead end was a unique peice of geometry and had no hand holds, markings or anything. It was also the first time you come to a thing you can climb so it wasn’t even established that you could ever go vertical.